By Jessica Dawson
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, November 23, 2000; Page C05

Faster than you can say "Botox," David Adamson's Seventh Street gallery
closed up shop this month for a much-needed face-lift. In just two weeks,
the space went from drab to gorgeous: new walls separate the exhibition
area from the work space, and blond wood floors replace dull gray carpet.
Finally, the gallery is equal to the high-caliber art it shows.

It's fitting, then, that work by Washington painter William Newman,
himself enthused by transformations, should christen the renovated space.
But his is not the stuff of traditional beauty: Nearly all the works in
"Cracked 2000" are portraits of the artist merged with photographs of an
animal or a relative. None, it's safe to say, is easy on the eye.

Newman has fashioned a 30-year career skirting the edges of propriety.
As far back as 1975, the Corcoran professor, now 52, transformed downtown
Washington into an outdoor peep show by painting a buxom nude named Sarah
on a 25-foot construction billboard. In the interim, he's painted scenes
of gore, confusion and bodies stretched almost beyond recognition. He departed
briefly from these themes in his last solo show five years ago with a collection
of abstracted flowers.

Fortunately, "Cracked 2000" marks Newman's return to mischief. He used
his computer to meld the photographs of animals and family with pictures
of himself. The human-human combos look normal enough. But the human-animal
combos are bizarre--like wicked cartoons sprung from the subconscious.

A digital art pioneer, Newman was touting the Apple computer as the
new paintbrush back in the early 1980s, well before it was cool. Since
then, computers have become integral to his method. For Newman, who was
diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some 20 years ago, pushing keys and inputting
coordinates has replaced the muscle control sapped by his disease. Digital
technology has streamlined his production, too. Inkjet printers shot Newman's
manipulated images straight onto canvases, eliminating the time-consuming
sketches before painting begins.

Newman contends that the images he's produced for this show are the
way he sees the world. "We move from one idea to the next and images fade
into one another," the artist explains. "It's a relief," he says, when
a canvas evolves to match the image swimming around in his mind.

Just how relieved anyone might be after seeing "Cracked 2000" is a tough
call.

On one wall, 14 small paintings set in wide black frames explore the
artist's connection to his human and animal family--like the children's
book "Where Did I Come From?" on acid. Each is monochromatic with just
a hint of color. The effect is a wall of yearbook photos. But although
the melanges of Newman with his wife, his daughter and his mom make sense--he's
looking at generational connectedness through physical bodies--they're
not particularly interesting. The unique features of individuals meld into
a generic boyish female.

Combinations of the artist and his pets--the current denizens of Chez
Newman include a bulldog, parrot and fish--yield the most intriguing work.
"Koi/Bill"--a fish with the clenched teeth and frightened eyes of a human--registers
with horror-movie intensity. The angst-ridden face is instantly recognizable.
The painting captures emotion and magnifies it to the size it feels like
in our heads.

The 10 color paintings from the appropriately named "E-I-E-I-O" series--incorporating
farm animals--make a fascinating museum of moods. Call it projection, but
we see heightened versions of ourselves in these animals. The resulting
images are wicked--a spaced-out ape with a cloud of dope smoke billowing
from his mouth, or a devilish dog wagging its pink tongue. These are folks
we know.

Newman's combination of conventional portrait techniques and wacky images
is built for satire. In "Bill/Horse," a dimwitted steed painted in a raw
butcher shop palette is cast against a deep black background that connotes
an official portrait. The juxtaposition reminds one of an 18th-century
political cartoon lampooning hated monarchs: Louis XIV as obtuse pony.

Not all are quite so funny. The acid pink swine in "Bill/Pig" is illuminated
by a hyper-bright spotlight casting deep shadows in the room behind her.
She stares plaintively at us. The picture, flecked with white brush strokes
like refracted light inside a cheap lens, looks like a still from a monitor-mounted
video-cam transmitting over the Internet. This little piggy looks trapped.

Some of Newman's work fits the art world's current fascination with
genetic engineering. "Bill/Sheep" is Dolly gone from cute to creepy. Her
determined expression reads ominous. But unlike the art world's paranoid
predictions of a ruthlessly bioengineered future--the Massachusetts Museum
of Contemporary Art's current "Unnatural Science" show, or last month's
"Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution" at New York's Exit Art--Newman
remains polemic-free.

The artist affixed translucent versions of some of his images to the
backs of eight Joseph Cornell-inspired boxes propped on a gallery ledge.
Beyond their densely cracked tempered-glass surfaces, there's an assortment
of beads, jacks and rubber balls wobbling around inside. We're meant to
look through them and admire the layered imagery, but the blue-tinted Plexiglas
drowns Newman's strong images.

The same holds true for the couple of Iris prints on view here. Multiple
images in blue and pink pastel look as if his rich oil palette has gone
through the wash cycle. They're delicate and pretty, rinsed clean of their
bite. Too bad. Newman is at his best when he's up to no good.